'Worst building in the history of mankind'

[Marilyn. 340]

It's the Ryugyong Hotel in North Korea, where the world's 22nd largest skyscraper has been vacant for two decades and is likely to stay that way ... forever.

A picture doesn't lie -- the one-hundred-and-five-story Ryugyong Hotel is hideous, dominating the Pyongyang skyline like some twisted North Korean version of Cinderella's castle. Not that you would be able to tell from the official government photos of the North Korean capital -- the hotel is such an eyesore, the Communist regime routinely covers it up, airbrushing it to make it look like it's open -- or Photoshopping or cropping it out of pictures completely.

Even by Communist standards, the 3,000-room hotel is hideously ugly, a series of three gray 328-foot long concrete wings shaped into a steep pyramid. With 75 degree sides that rise to an apex of 1,083 feet, the Hotel of Doom (also known as the Phantom Hotel and the Phantom Pyramid) isn't the just the worst designed building in the world -- it's the worst-built building, too. In 1987, Baikdoosan Architects and Engineers put its first shovel into the ground and more than twenty years later, after North Korea poured more than two percent of its gross domestic product to building this monster, the hotel remains unoccupied, unopened, and unfinished.

Construction on the Hotel of Doom stopped in 1992 (rumors maintain that North Korea ran out of money, or that the building was engineered improperly and can never be occupied) and has never started back up, which shouldn't come as a shock. After all, who the hell travels to beautiful downtown Pyongyang? It would make sense if the hotel were in South Korea, where Americans are allowed to travel and where projects like the Busan Lotte Tower and the Lotte Super Tower now rise thousands of feet above the formerly modest skyline.

With Pyongyang's official population said to range between 2.5 million and 3.8 million (official numbers are not made available by the North Korean government), the Ryugyong Hotel -- the 22nd largest skyscraper in the world -- is a failure on an enormous scale. To put it in context, imagine if the John Hancock Center (1,127 feet tall) in Chicago (population 2.9 million) was not only completely vacant, but unfinished with zero hope of ever being completed.

http://www.esquire.com/the-side/DESIGN/wor...r-012808?kw=ist

[Otto 83]

and ugly too..

[pedroh 21]

in the ps2 game mercenaries you get to to blow up that building with an anti-bunker missile.. so sweettt

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Wasn't that place in Lord of the Rings?

[almaty 19]

lol...brother #6...i was just going to write that..............

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

lol...brother #6...i was just going to write that..............

I think it would be kinda of cool if some sort of eccentric Howard Hughesian billionaire paid to have all the hideous architectural nightmares in the world transported brick by brick to a single location in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Sort of like the Anti-Vegas.

[almaty 19]

lol..kind of like the london bridge is in arizona..i like the idea.....

[SteveLaura 0]

I don't think it's unfinished. That's obviously a coop at the top there.

Kim Jong-il: Friend to our feathered breathen.

[DeadPoolX 9]

It reminds me of a cross between the Luxor (the one in Las Vegas, with the giant beam shooting out of it into the sky) and an Imperial Star Destroyer.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

It reminds me of a cross between the Luxor (the one in Las Vegas, with the giant beam shooting out of it into the sky) and an Imperial Star Destroyer.

If that's what it is - its rather badly parked...

[trailmix 77]

I like it

Granted the exterior could use a bit of polish, but in general I like it.

[DeadPoolX 9]

It reminds me of a cross between the Luxor (the one in Las Vegas, with the giant beam shooting out of it into the sky) and an Imperial Star Destroyer.

If that's what it is - its rather badly parked...

You try telling Darth Vader he has to move his ship and see what happens.

[Amby 490]

it looks kinda like an arrowhead...not really liking it much

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

It reminds me of a cross between the Luxor (the one in Las Vegas, with the giant beam shooting out of it into the sky) and an Imperial Star Destroyer.

If that's what it is - its rather badly parked...

You try telling Darth Vader he has to move his ship and see what happens.

I'm sure someone had to take a shuttle over and apologise...

[almaty 19]